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What exactly is happiness? A feeling? A state of mind? A level of accomplishment? You probably can’t answer that, and there’s a good reason why. Happiness is a very individual thing — it’s different for each of us. In the … Continue reading →

It is Spring, finally. The air is warm and breezy, and everywhere there is color. Grass and trees are green, and flowers are making a rainbow before our eyes.

For hundreds of years, men have brought women flowers as a gesture of romance. Now there is actual science to show that flowers really do affect mood and make women feel romantic,

A study done by Nicolas Gueguen of the Universite de Bretagne-Sud in France, and published in the journal “Social Influence,” found that females who had been sitting in a flower-covered room were much more likely to accept an invitation for a date than women sitting in an identical room without flowers.

What causes this romantic response in women exposed to flowers? Gueguen suggests that perhaps flowers act as environmental cues that affect a woman’s behavior and perception toward a man.

Other studies have shown relaxation is associated with exposure to nature, and increased activity in facial muscles associated with smiling have been evoked by images of flowers.

A behavioral study conducted at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital confirmed that people who generally do not describe themselves as morning people felt happier and more energetic after looking at flowers the first thing in the morning. Happiness, friendliness and warmth manifest much later in the day for people with morning blahs according to Nancy Etcoff, Ph.D. It was found that flowers at home impact people emotionally and they then felt less anxious and more compassionate. A boost of energy that lasted throughout the day was reported after viewing flowers in the morning in their homes, particularly in the kitchen.

Etcoff states “If you start the day in a more positive mood, you are likely to transfer those positive feelings to others – it’s what is called mood contagion”.

Jeanette Haviland-Jones, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology and director of the Emotions Laboratory at Rutgers University.

She believes that flowers support the so-called Big Bloom theory of evolution. Flowers cause positive emotions, and research shows that positive emotions make people better survivors from an evolutionary standpoint. This is because positive people are more likely to maintain social relationships, reproduce, find needed resources and be creative. Many flowers and plants rely on humans to fertilize them, nurture their growth and remove the weeds that would choke them to death. In return, they give us pleasure.

Scientifically, the way they repay us is that they have developed little chemical factories that decrease anxiety and improve our mood, says Haviland-Jones.

In studies Haviland-Jones and colleagues at Rutgers did, they found that women given flowers all smiled with true enjoyment, as determined by the smile being one associated with the raising of the cheeks and crinkling around the eyes. This type of smile is called the Duchene smile.

This type of smile has been linked to positive emotion and related changes in the brain. At the end of the study, people who received flowers reported being happy but the people in the study who didn’t receive the flowers did not.

Overall, these studies showed that the presence of flowers triggers happy emotions, heightens feelings of life satisfaction, and affects social behavior in a positive manner.

Why is this related to romance? Because when you feel happy, satisfied and relaxed, you are capable of being open to lots of other positive and strong feelings, like love and sexual desire.

So giving flowers to your significant other is a very good way to ensure the flow of loving and aroused feelings, all of which are very good for your mental and physical health.